Marisa Anne Clark and David Berube have each written their own vows to supplement the ones that Ontario law makes them say.

They’re getting married at city hall at 2 o’clock on Feb. 1, which is their three-year anniversary as a couple, and comes after a seven-month engagement. Marisa is 33, David is 36 and they both work in retail. “We tried to plan a bigger wedding and we just couldn’t make it work,” Marisa says. “We had looked at some rustic settings, maybe in a backyard, all kinds of Bohemian ideas, you know, and we couldn’t settle on one.”

“We really didn’t want to make people go to a lot of trouble, either,” David adds.

Ultimately a city hall wedding was Marisa’s idea. “We’ll save the money and go travel,” she laughs.

David Berube and Marissa Anne Clark are married by Officiant JoÃ«l Potvin, February 1st, 2018.

They’ve dressed up: Marisa is in a beige gown, David in a blue suit with faint red stripes, and he’s slicked his shaggy hair to the side. Tattoos peek out around cuffs and sleeves. They are nervous and excited and both are weepy and laughing all through their ceremony.

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Nearly 1,300 couples were legally joined in the city hall wedding chapel last year, which is officially called the Cumberland Room. It’s the size of a bedroom and fits 10 people, including the officiant, the couple and two witnesses. It has:

taupe walls,

10 chairs,

a lectern,

Canada and Ottawa flags,

one big spray of fake flowers,

a painting of a boat on the Ottawa River below Parliament, a painting of flowers on the wall opposite,

a civic crest, and

no windows.

If the sun is bright outside, a little natural light filters in through large glass doors.

The quarters of the city’s auditor-general and his staff are down the hall. City councillors’ offices are nearby on the same floor and they, bureaucrats and citizens visiting them often slip through the wedding parties on their way in and out.

Just outside the wedding room and around a corner, there’s a sort of wooden loveseat, half bench and half artwork, painted with the figures of a bride in a white dress and a groom in a morning coat. They look like the farm couple in American Gothic, but younger and dressed to the nines. They seem a bit morose, to be honest, but then matrimony is not a state of constant ecstasy.

The Cumberland Room is the designated spot for civic weddings in Ottawa but in exceptional cases the city will send an officiant out of the building, says Alain Hyppolite, the manager in charge. Three or four times a year, often to a hospital bedside. His department is looking at expanding the regular offerings to city buildings in places such as Orléans and Barrhaven but hasn’t made any decisions yet.

The price of a wedding at city hall has been steady for a decade: $141.30 for a ceremony during business hours, $212 for a Friday evening or Saturday afternoon. A marriage licence, which you’ll need no matter what, is another $161.60. In theory, the city takes walk-ups but on busy days scheduling can be difficult, so couples are firmly urged to book ahead.

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After officiant Joël Potvin walks Marisa and David through the legal necessities, David pulls out his phone and reads his pledge to his bride.

“I promise to continue to be there for you, to pick you up when you fall, and to give you that extra boost when you’re reaching for your goals,” he tells her. “Or just to make you smile when you’re feeling bored. I promise to always make you coffee with extra love, to give you the first sip of pop and the last slice of pizza. To never watch Netflix shows that we both enjoy alone. I always joke around that forever is too long but that’s because I’m scared that forever will not be long enough. I love you and I always will love you.”

She wipes her eyes. He wipes his.

Marisa takes out her own phone.

“OK, I went a little different,” she says. “Dave, from the second we met, I knew I wanted to hear you laugh for the rest of my life. So here goes nothing. Let me tell you something, brother, you know that to me you are the best there is, the best there was, the best there ever will be. Can you dig it sucka? You’ve made the list. This is the house that Marisa and Dave built and that’s the bottom line.”

David is giggling, with gusts to laughter.

“So let me just capture this briefcase, let out a ‘Whooo!’ get a ‘Too sweet’ and get down to business, so I can finally say yes, yes, yes. I love you forever, because Stone Cold said so!” Marisa says.

Afterward, she’ll explain, those are all wrestling references. “I was researching them on the Internet forever,” she says, and might have alarmed the neighbours by practising them loud and proud that morning.

They exchange rings and Potvin shepherds them through the paperwork.

“Did you like it?” Marisa asks her new husband while the witnesses are signing.

“Yeah! Did you like mine?!”

“Oh yeah.”

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The law gives the authority to solemnize civil marriages to city clerks, top officials in each municipality, but they can delegate the power to as many others as they see fit.

Ottawa’s city clerk, Rick O’Connor, says he tries to do one wedding a year (and once performed an emergency wedding in his office for a New Brunswick couple passing through town on their way to a beach wedding in the Caribbean, who’d discovered their ceremony might not be recognized in Canada) but he’s busy, so staff handle nearly all of them.

Joël Potvin is one of 12 regular marriage officiants, who rotate through the assignment from their regular jobs at city hall’s service desk. A fully loaded week has 36 ceremonies. A straightforward one takes about seven minutes, though couples can customize them some.

“It’s definitely the best part of this job, of working at Service Ottawa,” Potvin says. “I mean, I was surprised when I took the job that this was part of it — I could be doing business licences, I do marriage licences, I load Presto cards, and then for a week I do weddings. It’s one of the perks.”

New hires get taught the legal necessities and they’ll observe an experienced officiant a few times before they conduct their first ceremony, Hyppolite says. Other than that, there’s not much in the way of performance training.

Potvin has had the job only since May but he’s a pro. He has presence: the blue gown an officiant wears is a good starting point but his booming voice and erect bearing do most of the work. “I used to do improv when I was younger,” he says. “I’ve always been comfortable in front of people.”

He guides couples and their guests through the ceremony with dignity and a little twinkle. There are tissues, he informs everyone as he begins, and wiggles the box. He intones a brief script on the solemnity and importance of marriage, invites the couples to repeat the necessary vows, invites them to stop repeating after him as he pronounces the nuptials complete.

“Of course, to make it all official, we must sign some documents!” he concludes each caremony, more or less. Potvin guides the couples and their witnesses through everything, tells them it takes six to eight weeks for the government to register the marriage, and deftly moves the wedding party out of the room by asking them to follow him to the bride-and-groom bench.

He lingers in case of questions, then slips away.

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Xizi He and Siu-Tsin Cheng have a calmer ceremony than Marisa and David’s, an hour later. Siu-Tsin was born in Canada but raised in Hong Kong before returning for university, Xizi was an international student at the University of Ottawa.

He’s 27, she’s 25. They’ve been together a little more than four years and were engaged last November.

“After we graduated, we moved in together. I found she’s the one I wanted to spend my whole life with,” Siu-Tsin says.

Many of city hall’s weddings are for couples who’ve either immigrated from Asia or have roots there, in countries where religious weddings aren’t the norm. Some, like Xizi and Siu-Tsin, will have a simple city hall ceremony here so their legal status together is beyond question, and something more elaborate with extended family abroad.

Siu-Tsin Cheng (R) and Xizi He (L) are married by Officiant JoÃ«l Potvin.

They will have a second wedding and celebration in China, but Ottawa is home and this is the first ceremony. They chose city hall for its simplicity and formality.

Potvin guides them through the ceremony with care, having them each repeat some of the necessary phrases again when they stumble. An infant fusses and his father slips out of the Cumberland Room, but Potvin is so focused that it’s not until minutes later, after the paperwork is complete, that Potvin looks up and asks where the baby went.

Xizi and Siu-Tsin stay composed but several of their guests sniffle. When they exchange rings, Siu-Tsin is momentarily uncertain which of Xizi’s hands he’s supposed to take and everyone laughs.

“You’ve got the right one,” Potvin reassures him. These things happen. The rest goes off without a hiccup.

“May you enjoy lengths of days, fulfillment of hopes and peace and contentment of mind as you delight and live the terms of this covenant you have made here today with one another. You may kiss the bride,” he says, and their guests whoop.

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The city’s been holding weddings since 2005, a year after the provincial government gave city clerks the power to marry people and delegate that power to others if necessary. Ottawa did about 800 city hall weddings the first year, more than 900 in the second. Last year, 1,298.

Jim Watson is Ottawa’s mayor now but at the time he was Ontario’s minister of consumer and business services — responsible for the government end of the marriage business. He oversaw the change to the law that put ceremonies in city halls across the province.

“It’s almost every day you’ll see a couple and their family — and it’s usually a small party because the chapel is very small — but I think it’s great. Every once in a while I’ll walk by and someone will want a picture, which I always find awkward because someone will say, ‘Oh, he’s just doing a photobomb’,” Watson says. “But I love it. I think it brings a little bit of love and life and romance to city hall.”

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